The SCB (Shield Cell Bank) Thread
- Thread starter OnePercent
- Start date
The current SCBs overheat too much. Feels very similar to overcharging a module in EVE.
Problem is, in EVE you chose to do that, otherwise the module would not destroy your ship whenever used.
SCBs are not nerfed in the beta, they are broken.
FD have botched this issue from start to end.
From the start SCBs hit the game with a botched implementation of a sound concept. None of this should have come as a surprise to FD as concern about SCB implementation was far from subdued.
The problem should have been addressed, conclusively, in the early stages. Allowing this arguably broken mechanism to exist within the game for so long has resulted in the landscape of an SCB-rich environment to become ingrained in the minds of its players. By far the worst aspect of this is by cementing in the illusion that 'multi-role' ships were meant to be highly durable combat options.
(EDIT: Speaking to those who now say that big, expensive ships go pop too soon in a furball: if that is an issues it's not an issue with SCBs. I understand how people think that it might be SCBs that are at fault, but in practice that only comes about because SCBs were the only option to combat this effect. If FD want big ships to be able to say up longer in a furball then there are ways that can be accomplished without resorting to over-simplified solutions akin to shield potions which will unavoidably influence how all ships perform and not just the big few.
For example: implement a mechanism whereby larger shields get 'harder' the more damage they take from multiple simultaneous directions; the larger the ship the higher this multiplier becomes. Either that or just flat out increase the numbers on the very biggest of ships.)
The longer you leave a broken mechanic to exist within a game the harder it becomes to correct the mistake. By leaving such a thing so late in the day to conclusively address you're in effect attempting to change an increasingly established landscape for the players who've built up substantial resources 'making the most' out of said landscape. For some, perhaps many, any subsequent changes to that landscape will be increasingly seen as an attack on the way that they have been playing the game for hundreds (if not thousands) of hours, as posts on this forum already describe.
SCBs needed to be re-imagined, not endlessly tweaked.
From the start SCBs hit the game with a botched implementation of a sound concept. None of this should have come as a surprise to FD as concern about SCB implementation was far from subdued.
The problem should have been addressed, conclusively, in the early stages. Allowing this arguably broken mechanism to exist within the game for so long has resulted in the landscape of an SCB-rich environment to become ingrained in the minds of its players. By far the worst aspect of this is by cementing in the illusion that 'multi-role' ships were meant to be highly durable combat options.
(EDIT: Speaking to those who now say that big, expensive ships go pop too soon in a furball: if that is an issues it's not an issue with SCBs. I understand how people think that it might be SCBs that are at fault, but in practice that only comes about because SCBs were the only option to combat this effect. If FD want big ships to be able to say up longer in a furball then there are ways that can be accomplished without resorting to over-simplified solutions akin to shield potions which will unavoidably influence how all ships perform and not just the big few.
For example: implement a mechanism whereby larger shields get 'harder' the more damage they take from multiple simultaneous directions; the larger the ship the higher this multiplier becomes. Either that or just flat out increase the numbers on the very biggest of ships.)
The longer you leave a broken mechanic to exist within a game the harder it becomes to correct the mistake. By leaving such a thing so late in the day to conclusively address you're in effect attempting to change an increasingly established landscape for the players who've built up substantial resources 'making the most' out of said landscape. For some, perhaps many, any subsequent changes to that landscape will be increasingly seen as an attack on the way that they have been playing the game for hundreds (if not thousands) of hours, as posts on this forum already describe.
SCBs needed to be re-imagined, not endlessly tweaked.
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This waffle proves you have never been the large ship in any PvP, 30 mins LOL 30 seconds is the reality. Or should I say was the reality now it is just what your shields hold at the start of the fight. Large PVP is over.
The really well-considered element of Eve Online is that there is no God Gun, nor God Shield. There is a huge complexity and infinite combination of modules, weapons and armour, which can give you a small but significant advantage in some scenarios, but quite possibly a small but significant disadvantage in others. Even ships are carefully balanced and have a 'circle of death': although bigger ships can defeat smaller ships, a well-coordinated small group of small ships can take down a bigger one. In the end, the difference between victory and defeat is meant to come down to pilot skill and strategy. Not bad, for what is essentially a turn-based combat dynamic.
Shield cells are a God Shield. Who wins in a fight ends up coming down to who has the bigger ship with the bigger guns and the most shields. Which is a travesty in a game that has real dogfighting combat. Should not pilot skill and strategy determine the outcome of a fight? Hence there should be no God Guns, Shields or Ships. Every strength should come counterbalanced by a weakness. Shield cells are a poor dynamic that have no place in this game in the first place, so a heat nerf is more than called for.
Shield cells are a God Shield. Who wins in a fight ends up coming down to who has the bigger ship with the bigger guns and the most shields. Which is a travesty in a game that has real dogfighting combat. Should not pilot skill and strategy determine the outcome of a fight? Hence there should be no God Guns, Shields or Ships. Every strength should come counterbalanced by a weakness. Shield cells are a poor dynamic that have no place in this game in the first place, so a heat nerf is more than called for.
I welcome the nerfing to SCBs, although it's a bit severe currently....maybe a 30-40% heat penalty rather than 100% would make more sense, so you could use the things a couple of times for an escape but wouldn't think of using them more than once every so often when in the middle of a combat scenario
I think the bigger issue with all this though is that we have nerfed multi-role ships in the past because of SCB stacking in combat etc and they probably need a buff again to re-balance them...
The end result should be simple though, a combat orientated ship should be better at combat....FAS and FDL for the win me thinks
I think the bigger issue with all this though is that we have nerfed multi-role ships in the past because of SCB stacking in combat etc and they probably need a buff again to re-balance them...
The end result should be simple though, a combat orientated ship should be better at combat....FAS and FDL for the win me thinks
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It was so great to hear in summer when the first rumours about release 1.5 "Ships" came out. Once this was clear we really grinded hard to be able to buy these ships. My god, an Anaconda costs around 600m, so you will need at least 2b to be on the sure side! Now we have the ships and they look great. The balancing is nice, Frontier put some thoughts in it to have the Cutter and Corvette with seperate strengths. With the game changer of the SCB nerf, the PVP/PVE, CG or CZ the feeling is really changing to be in a big ship.
Even if this sounds arrogant. I am expecting a ship which represent the money I invested in this ship. Currently when I will met -2- vulture fighter at the same time, they have a pretty good chance to kick my butt. And if they lose their rebuy costs are 1m, but my will be >50m. Again I don't expect that my ship is 50x stronger nor better. But if this is the way how SCB will work in the future, I will switch back to FdL or Clippers again and have better chances to win against smaller but as well against bigger ships. In a Cutter or Corvette you will be the jackpot for every enemy wing in space!
Even if this sounds arrogant. I am expecting a ship which represent the money I invested in this ship. Currently when I will met -2- vulture fighter at the same time, they have a pretty good chance to kick my butt. And if they lose their rebuy costs are 1m, but my will be >50m. Again I don't expect that my ship is 50x stronger nor better. But if this is the way how SCB will work in the future, I will switch back to FdL or Clippers again and have better chances to win against smaller but as well against bigger ships. In a Cutter or Corvette you will be the jackpot for every enemy wing in space!
Large ships are finished in combat. This particularly ironic for the Corvette, just introduced and nerfed before the gear is up on her first flight, well done FD. The Cutter can still be used as a cargo ship, but since it is an evil 'multirole' it will not be viable for combat.
For those people that have spent the last two months gathering rank and cash in anticipation of these new ships I am sorry, I feel for you. For those that wailed like babies against the shield cell, congratulations, you have just destroyed large ship combat for everyone. Armour is not, I repeat IS NOT an alternative to shields, I think that many have forgotten the little mechanic recently introduced in 1.4 that grants a random Power Supply Module total failure chance to the game, that means your power module under attack can explode at random when taking damage. This I have experienced in an Asp that was blown up with well over 50% hull left just a few seconds into combat with an NPC, he got a lucky hit. I for one will not risk a 600 million ship to 'chance' hits when my shields go down from lack of cells, in fact I will simply not be using these large ships any more, I cannot afford to.
If you could only afford to when you had effectively unlimited use of shield cells, surely that tells you that something was wrong with the in-game mechanism?
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1) SCBs are the staple module of combat ships, not unlike cargo racks for traders. The more of them you have, the more potent you will be in combat as long as you can use them intelligently. They do require a bit of timing and calculation, especially with the new heat mechanics involved.
Someone argued that hard points and cargo racks should be compared instead. To a combat pilot, hard points enable combat, and SCBs enhance it. To a trader, an FSD enables trading. Cargo racks (beyond the first) enhance it.
2) Anyone who is serious about wanting someone dead is not going to be stopped by SCBs. You're going to bring frag cannons instead of multi cannons and beam lasers instead of pulse lasers. You're going to field an FGS instead of a vulture.
3) Big ships are extremely expensive and shouldn't be popping. If you're taking on an anaconda alone in a vulture, expect a long fight. There's nothing wrong with this.
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I'm not totally opposed to the new heat mechanics. A kinetic fit heavy ship is not going to get wrecked by +100% heat, and heat sinks will help with this. Instead of hitting the heat generation in a big way, I'd instead say that the MJs per use should be pushed up so that pilots can simply just take smaller ones according to their needs and capabilities. 7A SCBs refil 205 per use and 6As refil 185. This is not a good balance for 20% heat.
Someone argued that hard points and cargo racks should be compared instead. To a combat pilot, hard points enable combat, and SCBs enhance it. To a trader, an FSD enables trading. Cargo racks (beyond the first) enhance it.
2) Anyone who is serious about wanting someone dead is not going to be stopped by SCBs. You're going to bring frag cannons instead of multi cannons and beam lasers instead of pulse lasers. You're going to field an FGS instead of a vulture.
3) Big ships are extremely expensive and shouldn't be popping. If you're taking on an anaconda alone in a vulture, expect a long fight. There's nothing wrong with this.
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I'm not totally opposed to the new heat mechanics. A kinetic fit heavy ship is not going to get wrecked by +100% heat, and heat sinks will help with this. Instead of hitting the heat generation in a big way, I'd instead say that the MJs per use should be pushed up so that pilots can simply just take smaller ones according to their needs and capabilities. 7A SCBs refil 205 per use and 6As refil 185. This is not a good balance for 20% heat.
Big ships with big prices should be in advantage point. FD did a bad decision with the heat thing on SCBs... better would be a delay to use a cell after another in a short time. So you couldn't spam it like a crazy guy... but working with heat is also a nerf to a single cell using.
They really should think about it twice or they will loose a lot of players with upcoming and new space sims...
They really should think about it twice or they will loose a lot of players with upcoming and new space sims...
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Before I had a reasonable chance of surviving a wing of players interdicting me. I might have made it back into SC with my shields down and a few % of hull damage, that was with cells being used. Now with the cells nerfed to death, I have the choice of using a cell which will restore 5 seconds worth of shield life or allowing the shield to fail and opening the ship to serious damage. Remember this is an unwanted interdiction, I am just trying to survive. All of this is based on my not returning fire and simply trying to escape. If one of the players is in a large ship that mass locks me the chances of survival drop even more. The spool up time for a system to system jump are longer than a jump back to super cruise. The heat generated by a system to system jump precludes the use of a shield cell.
All in all the use of a large ship in open is a real liability.
Nitek [pl]
Banned
Proof please, or this is unsupported speculation. A few PvPers on the forums or some friends tell you they are not playing because of SCBs is not indicative of anything on the large scale, it may even be people just flouncing and they will continue playing.
From what i understood, the hardcore PvPers loved the SCB meta. Always so hard to tell with all the arguments that go back and forth around here. I sometimes get confused which side of what argument i'm on!
"we" loved it. Now "we" hate it. Elite 1.5 is broken beyond repair.
But the worst is this:
http://fototrip.delfnet.com/sht.jpg
Can you read it?
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I honestly don't see a problem with this. A large ship without support is just a big payday for bounty hunters, why should it be different for player controlled large ships?I think the developers went way to much on the nerf. I am not going to fly my anaconda in any battles anymore. It not worth the insurance screen. Small ship fun time.
Can they add a hull repair module? That would make armor builds interesting. Then I could outfit one of those and a shield cell bank.. That would occupy another slot and limit "stacking." I'm thinking something like a nano-bot repair module... It would operate similarly to a shield cell bank but repair the hull a certain amount.
Then give me npc wingmen. I have no wingmen flying with my anaconda to support me.
And you provide the proof how broken SCBs were, when a Python tanks 5 ships for longer than 30 seconds and makes it out with 61% hull.
What next, a healer ship so we can be Warcraft in space with Tank, Healer and DPS?
2:25 First person starts attacking the Python (gets Ignored).
2:36 Second person joins in (also gets ignored).
3:02 Third person now attacking the Python.
3:08 Fourth person joins the fray. (Python has stayed on it's target the whole time and is using SCBs like eating smarties).
4:00 Fifth person starts shooting the Python (Python turns on more SCBs)
4:34 Pythons shields finally drop after a few SCBs being used.
5:33 Python jumps out at 61% hull
SCBs are not broken?? Tanking 5 people for 30 seconds, not to mention the prior 2 minutes of ignoring the fact he was being shot at (not aware of the situation or showing off as they had a broken toy equipped?).
Thanks for proving what what folks have been saying for a year. the SCBs needed to be removed or toned down as you can see in that video
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I don't see an issue with this either.
Yeah. And you know what the most common weapon the attackers were packing?
Multi-cannons.
Check.
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